Computerized networks, such as the Internet, have become increasingly popular. Such networks commonly allow computers at geographically distant locations to exchange information. For example, a computer user in the United Kingdom may be able to download software from a server located in the United States.
A disadvantage that has become apparent with such networks is, however, increased congestion, slowing down the speed at which data can be communicated at particular times. For example, a computer user downloading a multimedia video clip may experience choppy playback, or playback stoppage in the middle of a clip, due to the network (e.g., the Internet) being congested to the point where all the data transmitted thereover cannot be transmitted in a timely manner. As more and more data-intensive applications have become commonplace on the Internet, such as multimedia video streaming, congestion has only gotten worse, and does not promise to let up in the future.
Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) has been proposed as a manner by which to implement congestion avoidance, as described in K. Ramakrishnan and S. Floyd, A proposal to add Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP, Request for Comments RFC 2481, Internet Engineering Task Force, January 1999, which is hereby incorporated by reference. However, as has been proposed within this reference, ECN is very particular to TCP. This means that usage of a great amount of network bandwidth that relies on UDP or other non-TCP protocols is unaffected by ECN, such that congestion avoidance strategies cannot be triggered by ECN. Further, ECN as has been proposed within this reference relies on notifying only those users (e.g., channels) that are causing congestion, instead of all related users (or, channels), restricting the manner by which congestion can be alleviated.
For these and other reasons, there is a need for the present invention.